Bipartisan Study Assails No Child Left Behind Act
The New York Times > Education > A Bipartisan Study Assails No Child Left Behind Act: "bipartisan panel of state lawmakers that studied the effectiveness of President Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative assailed it today as a flawed, convoluted and unconstitutional education reform effort that had usurped state and local control of public schools."
posted by Black Sheep at 10:15 PM
6 Comments:
Hi Black Sheep. I just stumbled across you via Bad Christian. Nice stuff.
Thanks for the comments!
At first this was surprising. I initially believed Bush was trying to help the country’s schools. However, as it turns out, Bush’s new plans cause a lot of harm. Also, the act creates significant problems by pushing huge burdens onto the state. Yet, surprisingly, Bush has not yet significantly altered the act.
This new act has clearly given the federal government too much power. Even though schools have always been under state and local control, the federal government, somehow, finds that it has the ability to force standards and expensive regulations on the states.
The new report also shows the appearance of various unexpected consequences which “the federal government is indifferent to.” These consequences include “ the lowering of academic standards, the increased segregation in schools, and the driving away of top teachers from needy schools.”
States also believe that 100% proficiency in math and reading by 2014 is an impossible goal. It will “put states at a constant risk of lawsuits when schools claim they were underfunded.”
With all of the problems this act brings it seems as if education will become worse then it already is. While I do agree that standards definitely must be raised. I believe that this is one of the worst ways to do so.
The evidence for the problems that come with this act are from the Boston Globe at http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2005/02/23/state_lawmakers_target_bushs_schools_law/. (The article is from February 23,2005)
Thanks for the post Anonymous. I am a public school teacher and have witnessed first-hand the effects of NCLB. I will be posting on this topic soon. Thanks to all for stopping by.
I'm curious about something, Black Sheep. Do you think that Bush, or Republicans, will eventually try to dismantle the education system? He's obviously after Social Security because of this ownership society business. If you take that as an attack on systems that are at least in some sense Socialist (or at least Socialist in the eyes of some), will other such programs follow? Like public education? If Republicans want us to own our retirement, will he want us to own our education, too? I can't imagine Bush being able to get around to something like that, but in, say, 10 years will that be the platform? Thoughts?
Kevin,
Good questions. I think I'll post on this in the coming days . . .
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